To:N. E. BAUMAN[1]

Published:First published in 1928.

      Sent from Munich to Moscow.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1974,

      Moscow,Volume 34,

      pages65-66.Translated:Clemens DuttTranscription\Markup:D. MorosPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2005).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

May 24, 1901

Wereceived your letter with the report for January,
February, March and April. Thanks for the detailed and
clear list of income and expenditure. But as regards your
activity in general, we are still unclear what exactly this
activity is and what its results are. You wrote that you
have your hands full and there is no one to replace you,
but you have still not kept your promise to describe, this
activity. Is your work confined to forwarding literature
to the points named in the report? Or are you engaged in
forming a group or groups? If so, where and what kind,
what has been done already, and what are these groups
for—for local work, for sending to us for literature, or for something else?

Weask about this because the question is very important.
Things with us are going none too well. We are bad off
financially, Russia gives almost nothing. Shipping is still
unorganised and haphazard. Under these conditions, our
“tactics” must aimwhollyat 1) sending here the fullest
possible amount of the money collected in Russia forIskra,
and reducing local expenditure to a minimum; 2) spending
money almost exclusively onshipment, as we already have
receiving agents functioning in Pskov and Poltava who are
comparatively very cheap and no burden on our exchequer.

Pleasethink this over carefully. Our daily bread, by
which we barely manage to keep alive, consists as before
solely of suitcases. For a couple of them we pay about a
hundred rubles, and the chance nature of the persons sent
entails a vast amount of delay, carelessness, loss, etc.
Nothing is being done to organise the sending of “suitcasers”
from Riga (which, according to both Raznotsvetov andErnst, is possible). There is no news from
Leopold.[2]Nothing is being arranged in Finland, although this is also
possible, as we are assured from various quarters. Is it
reasonable, in such a state of affairs-, to spend 400 rubles
in four months on local reception and intermediaries for
forwarding literature?

Wethink you should move into the immediate vicinity
of the frontier for the sake of shipping at least 2-4
suitcases and 10–20 pounds per month by personal handling.
What do you say to this?

[1]Bauman,Nikolai Ernestovich(1873-1905)—a professional
revolutionary, prominent leader of the Bolshevik Party. Began his
revolutionary activities in the early nineties. In 1900 was one of the
founders of theIskraorganisation and worked in Moscow as its
agent in 1901-02. At the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. joined the
Bolsheviks. p. 65

[2]Thepseudonym “Leopold” has not been deciphered. Apparently it
was the code name given to the shipping group associated with
N. E. Bauman. p. 66